22 The Ottawa Naturalist. [April— May 



BOOK NOTICES. 



A Revision ov the Genera and Species of Canadian Paleozoic 

 Corals, by Lawrence M. Lambe, Assistant Palaeontolog-ist to 

 the Geological Survey of Canada. Contributions to Canadian 

 Palaeontology, Vol. IV., Part i. 



Students ot Palasontolog-y owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. 

 Lawrence M. Lambe for undertaking such a task as the revision 

 of the Canadian Palaeozoic Corals. The literature on the subject 

 is very difficult to obtain. The work of Billings, although pub- 

 lished in Canada, is out of the reach of ordinary students; that of 

 Nicholson was only partly published in Canada, his recent and 

 most valuable work appearing only in expensive monographs and 

 journals in Great Britain. Professors Hall and Rominger, the 

 most prominent investigators in the United States, of Canadian 

 fossil corals, have naturally published the results in that country, 

 so that the plight of the Canadian who desires to study these 

 organisms, but who has not a large palaeontological library at his 

 command, has been well nigh hopeless. But to those who have 

 access to the extensive and scattered literature of palaeozoic corals 

 the condition of the nomenclature combined with the lack of pre 

 cision in description and the inadequate illustration of the details 

 of structure, has deterred from the study of corals many who have 

 been steady workers in other branches of palaeontology. In the 

 the nature of palffiontological investigation this condition must be 

 present more or less in each of the main divisions of the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms as represented by fossils, until, after the 

 collection ot ample material, someone undertakes a revision similar 

 to that of Mr. Lambe. The recent work of Wachsmuth and 

 Springer in the camerate Crinoids, and of Hall and Clarke in the 

 Brachiopods affords ample evidence of the necessity for patience 

 in the accumulation of information before revision is justifiable. 



The material in the possession of our Survey, gathered during 

 the last half century from widely separated areas, and the accumu- 

 lation of observations on fossil corals by the scientific world dur- 

 ing that time, make it clear that the time for revision has come. 

 The labour involved in this revision must have been very great, 

 and at first sight it might seem out of proportion to the result if 



